Saturday, March 31, 2012

the game is afoot

If someone had asked me to identify what the blue, orange, and red sections represented, I would never have guessed. At least, not correctly.

It certainly is not a map of how the world would vote (if it could) in the 2012 presidential election. That would mean Kenya would vote for Mitt Romney. And that sounds odd.

The blue area is the portion of the world that observes daylight saving time (with varying start dates). The red and orange portions represent countries that formerly or never have played the game of springing forward and falling back.

Mexico joins the game tomorrow morning. Three weeks after Canada and The States switched. (That is the extent of my public service announcement for those of you in Mexico. Fortunately, my telephone and computers should switch automatically. But, if I want to get up in time to get to church, I will need to manually move my night stand alarm forward one hour.)

For those of you who dislike daylight saving time (and that appears to be a vast majority of the people in the world who simply do not play the game), here is another piece of trivia for your quiver.

In The States, daylight saving time was first implemented as a temporary expedient to save utilities during the First World War. Another Progressive idea to create a Wilsonian world.

Like most things temporary proposed by the government, it became permanent. Just like the temporary increase in income tax rates to finance that war. Not to mention the fact that it failed to save utility costs, as well.

But it is still with us. And I will do my part to play the game.

Fortunately, by choosing to live in Mexico, my time under sentence will be a few weeks shorter than my northern correspondents.

Of course, if I really disliked the system that much, I could move someplace where it is not an issue.

There you go, Nita has a place for you that's not progressive but in fact backward. A Wilsonian world was to be a world be at world at peace. Surely that should fit in with your deep religious convictions. Or is it that progress cannot fit in with religion?

It has a good aspect, though, and a very good one it is. It forces us to change. In my ideal world, I would get out of bed with no idea what time it was or how long an hour would last. But I guess I do that already. It's called retirement.

Daylight saving time went in and out of favor after the First World War. Farmers hated it. Still do. Plants and animals stay on standard time.

After WWI, some states kept daylight saving time; others abandoned it. When Congress passed a uniform law in 1966 for states who played the game, a number of holdout states joined.

I remember an initiative in Oregon where the opponents featured bleary-eyed children trudging to school in the dark as part of their ad campaign. It was an early lesson about the power of political manipulation.

The evidence on whether it has an energy value is mixed -- with most studies showing, at best, a negligible effect. But the kids who were blackboard monitors at school and grew up to be politicians and bureaucrats seem to love it. No matter the evidence.

Wilson suffered from the delusion that human nature can be perfected through the reform of political and social processes. His views were a mix of his Presbyterian upbringing and his complete faith that technology would improve our very natures. He was very much a man of his time. Many fell away from the Progressive faith with the sinking of the Titanic. And more with the outbreak of the First World War.

I too dream of a world at peace. The world that Jesus described in the Sermon on the Mount as the Kingdom of God. A kingdom that is created one heart at a time. And certainly not with swords and bombs.

And, as I commented to Andean, I do not oppose change -- even in the smallest things. I came to Mexico to get up every morning and not have the slightest idea how to get through the day. A time switch of one hour is a tiny drop in that dream.

I suggest you don't have a flight a day or two after and forget to set your watch ahead like I did a few years ago in Guad. After casually having a burger and beer I walked to the gate to have them tell me .... we called your name a number of times!

I was able to get a free flight out the next day but spent over $100 staying at the big airport motel. Hard to think of that when booking online a few months ahead

I have to agree with Laurie, Steve. I luv'd the map. It clearly shows that equatorial or close nations do not have a need for bogus / artificial changes. Seems like a valid reason to move a little further South, eh?Cheers! Dan in NC